


one for the book

by helsinkibaby



Category: The Flying Doctors
Genre: F/M, Het, Only One Bed, Romance, trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 12:18:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18549625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: When Tom and Chris are stranded in a drover’s shack where there is only one bed, the rest of the town are very interested.





	one for the book

**Author's Note:**

> For trope bingo prompt “only one bed” 
> 
> Also a shameless rip off of the season 8 episode “Jacqueline” aka “If Someone Wrote This As A Fanfic, People Would Laugh”

When the word comes back to Cooper’s Crossing that the storm has hit Windara station earlier than expected, that there’s no way Debbie can get the Nomad out to collect the RFDS personnel on a clinic run out there, there’s no initial cause for concern. 

But when people realise that it’s Tom and Chris who are stranded out there, they get interested in a hurry. 

“You’re kidding me,” Kate says, staring at DJ with eyes wide, even as a smile starts to spread across her face. “They’re already at the air field?” 

“And Jim can’t make it out to collect them, the place is already starting to flood.” DJ looks way too happy about that. “But all is not lost because there’s a drover’s shack spitting distance down the road and they radioed in to say that’s where they were bunking down for the night.” There is undisguised glee in his tone. 

“A drover’s shack?” Kate echoes, her mind’s eye conjuring all sort of images about what that might look like. 

“Yep.” DJ pops the p at the end of the word, accompanies it with a clap of his hands. He waggles his eyebrows. “Get the book out, Kate... someone’s about to hit the jackpot!” 

Kate rolls her eyes but she doesn’t disagree. And if she crosses her fingers behind her back, well, only Geoff is in a position to notice and he won’t tell. 

Meanwhile, in a drover’s shack a couple of hours away, Tom sits on the lone chair at the rickety table, smiles across the room at Chris, who has made herself comfortable on the bed. She’s kicked off her shoes, has her legs crossed at the ankle, is sitting with her back against the headboard as she smiles at him. They’ve managed to get the fire going in the grate so they won’t freeze, have used the same fire to boil up some water so they’ve been able to at least make some tea. The just in case sandwiches that Mary Burns had insisted they take with them had made a decent enough supper, some even left over for the following morning and Edna Sinclair’s lammingtons had made a nice treat for afterwards. 

All things considered, Tom thinks there are worse places to be stranded. 

But, he reminds himself, there is an elephant in the room that won’t be ignored for too much longer. 

Like that fact that nightfall is fast approaching and they are stranded in a drover’s shack in the middle of nowhere. 

And there is only one bed. 

As if she can read his mind - and honestly, there are times when he wouldn’t put it past her - she lifts an eyebrow, her smile taking on a slightly devilish glint. “So,” she says, “do you think they’re checking the book yet?” 

He laughs, partly in humour, partly in surprise that she’s saying that at all. Because they both know that there’s a book on when they’ll get back together - and it’s when, not if - but they’ve never, not once, talked about it. That it’s happening now, like this, is unexpected to say the least. 

Then again, he thinks, maybe it’s not. Save for the radio in the corner, they’re cut off from the world. No-one is going to come and interrupt them. The shack is dark, lit only by a couple of oil lamps and the fire in the corner, three stubby little candles on a plate in the middle of the table. The rain beats a steady tattoo on the tin roof and it all seems very strange, very isolated, like they’re in the own little world where the normal rules don’t apply. 

He can live with that. 

“I think they were checking it the second we radioed in,” he tells her and she laughs softly. “Us, stranded out here, a drover’s shack, only one bed? Nancy Buckley must be losing her mind.”

Chris’s chuckle is soft, knowing. “She’s not the only one,” she says. 

Tom tilts his head, suddenly unsure of how to take that. Is she talking about herself, or someone else? Once upon a time, he would have known that, but that was then, before Africa, before he’d broken both their hearts. 

“You have nothing to worry about,” he tells her and a flicker of something unidentifiable passes over her face. “The bed’s all yours. I can sleep here.” 

This time there’s no chuckle. It’s a straight up laugh, stunned, incredulous even. “On that thing?” She lifts both eyebrows as she eyes up the chair that is even more rickety than the table. “Don’t be ridiculous.” 

“I’ve slept on worse-” he counters, stopping when she scoffs and rolls her eyes. 

“And you’ll be complaining about your back for the next week. At least.” She shifts, swings her legs over the side of the bed. “If either of us is going to sleep on that chair, or the floor, it should be me.” 

Which might be true - her five feet two would fit here far more comfortably than his just a shade over six feet frame. But they both know that’s never going to happen - the world might be changing rapidly with women’s rights and all, but there’s no way Tom Callaghan is sleeping in a bed while a woman sleeps on a chair. 

“No,” is all he says, flat and immovable. 

Chris shrugs one shoulder as she stands, pushes back the covers. “Then you should get over here,” she says, “before I change my mind.” She turns her back to him and he fancies her sees her take a deep breath. Then she looks over her shoulder at him, her eyes dancing. “Unless you’re afraid your snoring will keep me awake...”

He laughs at that because they both know he doesn’t snore. Shaking his head, he stands, toes off his shoes and blows out the candles on the table. He busies himself with turning off the oil lamps as he hears her slide under the covers and he doesn’t look around until any movement has stopped. 

When he does, the sight he sees makes his breath catch. 

The dim light cast by the fire plays across Chris’s face, doing amazing things to her hair and her skin and her eyes. She stares across at him, not blinking, and suddenly he’s years in the past, before Africa and heartbreak, when their relationship was exciting and passionate and new and the future stretched before them, promising nothing but happiness. 

Longing for those days sweeps over him like the rain outside and he knows it’s written all over his face when she gives him a sad smile, turns away from him. 

He’s tempted to go back to his chair, maybe even grab a blanket and sack out on the floor in front of the fire. 

Then he hears her quiet words. “Come to bed, Tom.” 

He can’t refuse an offer like that. 

Like her, he gets into bed fully clothed, lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. It’s not very comfortable though, the mattress being both lumpy and not really wide enough for two. There’s no way he can stop himself from brushing up against Chris every time he moves, even if she’s pressed herself close to the wall, is obviously trying to keep herself as far away from him as possible. 

She still falls asleep before he does. 

But eventually, sleep claims him, for a while at least. When he wakes up, it’s still dark outside, the rain still beating steadily on the tin roof of the shack. The fire has died down a little but he’s still warm and he realises quickly that that’s because Chris has turned in her sleep and her body is pressed against his, just the way he remembers. Her head is on his shoulder, his arms around her waist, holding her tightly against him and he has to swallow hard at his right this feels, even if he knows it’s a bad idea to let himself get a taste of being like this with her. One taste won’t be enough, could never be enough. 

But Tom’s never been accused of being unselfish and he tightens his grip on her, closes his eyes and lets sleep claim him once more. 

Waking up for the second time is not as peaceful. 

He’s used to his own nightmares waking him up, memories of hot desert sun, starving children, maimed by bombs and bullets. Those nightmares are familiar, and he can handle them. 

Being woken up by Chris shifting restlessly against him when he remembers her sleeping soundly, hearing her low moan of pain when he remembers giggles of pleasure - that’s something new. And very unwelcome. 

But when she wakes with a gasp, sits bolt upright in bed struggling for breath, when her shoulders shake and he can feel her heart pounding when he lays his hand on her back, he realises that something is terribly wrong. 

“You’re ok, Chris,” he tells her, sitting up himself, shifting so that he can give her a little space, all without taking his hand from her back. “It was just a bad dream.” She turns her head to look at him, eyes glassy but focused. She presses her hand over her heart, nods, but her breath is still coming in rapid, sharp gulps. “It’s just panic,” he says, his palm moving in slow circles around her back. “It’ll fade... just give it a minute.”

She nods again and he wonders how many times this has happened to her because it’s becoming readily apparent to him that any panic is a holdover from whatever images haunted her nightmare rather than panic about not being able to breathe. He doesn’t stop rubbing her back, lets his other hand fall to her knee, and when her hand moves from her chest to cover it, he knows the worst is over. 

“I’m ok,” she says eventually. Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been screaming for days. It’s shaky too, filled with emotion, but her eyes, when he looks into them, are clear. 

He intends to keep looking into her eyes, he does. But when he looks down at her, he cant help but notice that, in her twisting, the top couple of buttons of her blouse have come undone. And he knows he shouldn’t look, shouldn’t stare, but he is a man who’s been celibate since the last time he woke up in bed with Chris Randall, and he’s known for a long time that even though he’s the one who broke her heart, he’s as close to being over her as he was the day he caught a bus to Broken Hill and walked out of her life. Which is to say, not at all. 

So he looks. 

And what he sees makes his breath catch. 

And not in the way it did when the firelight played across her skin the previous night. 

He sees, as if it belongs to someone else, his index finger reaching out, pushing one side of the blouse away. Her breath catches too, like she’s realised what he sees, and her eyes turn dark and serious and sorrowful. 

“Chris...” He breathes out her name as his fingers touch the raised white line of what he recognises as a heart surgery scar. 

She must hear the question he can’t voice. Her hand closes over his finger, brings it down over her chest, over the scar. “An intramural pheocryocytoma,” she says quietly, so matter of factly that he almost misses the next words as his head spins trying to take those in. “A year ago. Hence the nightmare.” 

She might be matter of fact but he’s not, knows he’s going to have new fodder for nightmares of his own after this. “I didn’t know.”

Her smile is slow, sad. Her hand squeezes his finger. “You weren’t here,” she reminds him. As quickly as the words leave her lips, she’s screwing up her face, closing her eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that...”

“I know.” It’s the truth too, petty barbs had never been Chris’s style. If she had something to say to him, she said it straight out. “I never thought...” The words die in his throat, stifled by a sudden lump appearing there. Her hand squeezes his again and he suddenly realises how close they are to each other, how their hands are still joined, how his other arm is around her shoulders, just itching to draw her close. “I thought everything was the same, you know? Cooper’s Crossing, where nothing ever changes. I was so wrapped up in everything that happened to me, I never thought to ask how things were for you.” 

Chris looks down and when she looks back up, there’s a twitch to her lips that surprises him. “In fairness,” she says, “I suppose you thought the Bush Telegraph would fill you in on anything big.” 

The truth of the statement surprises a laugh from him. “Chris... why didn’t you tell me?” Not that he has any right to expect that of her - he surrendered any claim on her when he left for Africa. 

The shoulder under his hand rises in a shrug. “It was in the past,” she tells him. “It didn’t seem to matter anymore. Besides...” She dips her head, lets her cheek fall against his chest. “I quite liked someone not looking at me like I was fragile glass, about to shatter at any moment.” 

His hand moves from her shoulder to the nape of her neck, plays with the short hairs he finds there. “I could never think of you as fragile,” he tells her. “You’re the strongest woman I know.” 

She huffs out a tiny breath against his chest. It sends a rush of goosebumps rippling over his skin. He shifts his hand, the one joined with hers, so that he can lace their fingers together, his other hand moving slightly higher, threading through her hair. 

Then it’s her turn to shiver. 

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, he pulls back just enough so that he can look down at her, see her face. Just as slowly, she looks up at him, her eyes huge and dark in the dim light. 

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, using more restraint than he knew he had, he lowers his face towards hers, waiting the whole time for her to pull away. 

She doesn’t. 

He stops with his lips a hair’s breadth from hers. 

“Just so you know,” he whispers, “this isn’t for whoever has the book. This is all me.” 

Her laugh is the greatest thing he’s ever heard, the best sound he never knew he’d been missing. 

Until she sighs as their lips meet and suddenly, that is.


End file.
